Daddy Issues are the Least of your Worries

It's 2014 and one of the most respected actors on television is Bryan Cranston. The man recently won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of depraved anti-hero Walter White, and for scaring the bejeezus out of us for five heart-pounding seasons of wonderful television. He is in a position right now where he can do almost anything he wants with his career. The man is a legend, and his acting skills will be forever enthroned in the pantheon of television greats.

It's 2001. Bryan Cranston is on Malcolm in the Middle. He is singing a song about eating bacon while dancing around in tightie-whities.

Most people, believing that comedic and dramatic actors are two entirely different breeds, can't make the connection between these two wildly different stages of Cranston's career. They call the period he's in right now the most successful time of his career, when in reality he was a star on a long-running sitcom for over six years. And not a bad sitcom, either; people LOVED Malcolm in the Middle, and it certainly wasn't because of Frankie Muniz.

This article's not about Cranston (mostly). It's about why this show isn't a bad place to get your start. I wish more of the actors on this show had the same career boom as Cranston, because they ALL have chops.

Break out the PBR, kids. We're heading to our favorite Tri-County area with the Malcolm in the Middle drinking game.

Drink up, Nerds!

I am convinced that we will never see a show like 30 Rock again.

Around this time last year it ended forever. Since then, I have consistently watched re-runs. I have constantly quoted snippets from my favorite episodes both in real life and while I'm watching other shows (only Arrested Development beats this show in terms of quote appropriation). The cast had godlike chemistry, it survived eight seasons despite never being a hit ratings-wise, and more than anything, it raised the standard for what a television comedy could do. It reminded me and thousands of people why we love television in the first place; in the right hands, it can do things films can't. It can create characters that develop long-term and jokes that can ferment for years at a time.

Tina Fey has two new pilots that have been picked up, and I couldn't be happier. But I doubt they'll surpass 30 Rock, a show that stretched boundaries and started trends. However, like any successful TV sitcom, it does have a formula, and therefore makes a great drinking game.

Lascivious Lesbians? Lovely!

I'm a relative newbie to this show, and I know VERY few people who watched it while it was airing. The entire six season series is on Netflix, sort of a curious example of mid-2000's television. A show about a group of lesbians living it up in Los Angeles. Like it? Love it? Loathe it? The choice is yours. It definitely earns its name as a trailblazing series. I'm not sure if we've ever seen so many gay women on television since. But is it any good?

To tell the truth? It's a soap opera.

There is little to distinguish this show from any soap opera except that all of the protagonists are female, and most of them are gay. Otherwise, the main ingredients are there: a constantly shifting cast, overlapping sexual liasions, nudity, LOTS of hurt feelings and betrayal. There's even a murder later on in the show (don't ask me, I didn't watch that far).

The real question concerning this show is how progressive can it be when it follows the same basic formula of every daytime television drama ever made? Let's dive into the lucsciously laconic lives of the ladies on "The L Word".

It's a Drinking Game About Nothing

Oh, Seinfeld. We barely understood you when we were children. Now we understand you all too well.

A show many have labeled "ahead of its time", it was in many ways the anti-sitcom. Plot threads revolved around small, even non-existent slights. Conversations would often derail completely. Scenes lasted for sixty seconds at the most. And all four of the main characters were legitimately terrible people. It's a miracle it got picked up, and even more miraculous that it ran for nine seasons to critical and popular acclaim.

I found making a drinking game for this show difficult, which shouldn't have come as a shock considering how unpredictable each episode became, especially season to season. "Seinfeld" threatened to break my tried and true game-making methods. Once again, we watched five episodes, none of which resembled any of the others. And we gazed upon mid-nineties New York City with shock and awe, and as we drank the same question burned in all of our minds:

Gee Whiz, What Just Happened?

Okay...okay, let me take a second to try and remember.

I'd had the idea to make a drinking game to The Brady Bunch a while ago. Yeah, not a lot of people watch this show much anymore, but all our parents loved it, and we loved it by association. The MOST improbable family goes on "adventures", in 20 minute episodes that are, as TV Tropes puts it, almost completely devoid of conflict. It could be fun to drink to, I thought. It could be good for a laugh.

I awoke the day after we played this game to enough empty bottles on my floor to make a large sculpture with, a splitting headache, and little memory of the episodes we watched.

I'm sure I can figure out what happened. I just need to retrace my steps...

One Small Step for Drinking Games...

Most of you have a fully formed opinion about reality television. Heavily scripted, manipulative shlock that appeals to the lowest common denominator, right? Well, I'm willing to bet you've never seen an episode of most reality competition shows, so shut your mouth. I'm here to tell you that The Amazing Race ROCKS. HARDCORE.

Honestly, you can't get better drinking game fodder than reality television. The same things happen in each episode. The pacing is off-the-charts fast, the characters border on cartoonish levels of excitement, and generally the shows get insanely complicated and filled with rules. The Amazing Race is no exception, but even someone with THE lowest opinion of reality TV can appreciate the show for its adventurous bent and exotic locales. It brings out the wayward traveller in all of us.

The show's been running for over ten years, so you've got a lot of catching up to do. Drink hearty, friends, we're going overseas.

It Keeps Going, and Going, and Going...

This entry brings television month to a close. And what better way to end the month than with the longest running sitcom outside syndication?

The Simpsons has been on the air for 24 YEARS, and with good reason. Before Matt Groening took network television by storm, airing an animated show for adults was not recommended, especially in a prime-time slot on a network as reputable as FOX. Now the concept is De Riguer for most networks, and the series itself has been highly influential in the realms of animation, sitcoms, and comedy in general. This show brought cartoons back into the spotlight, and continues to lampoon American pop culture to this day.

But can a show really run for longer than the lifespan of most viewers of this blog, still crank out joke after joke, and stay relevant to the general American populace? And can there be a drinking game that will accurately encompass 24 years of television? We sat down to find out.

Coming Soon to Netflix

GUYS. It's almost May 26th. Arrested Development Season 4 is almost within your grasp. AREN'T YOU EXCITED???

What's that? You never watched this show?

Well, you have plenty of time to catch up. With only three seasons, the last of which is technically a half season, up on Netflix, you have no reason to dawdle. This show is genius, in a way that few shows have managed to emulate. The jokes come so quickly, the twists come so out of nowhere, the humor is SO absurd. The ties the show holds to reality, while slim, are tight, which keeps it from flying completely off the rails. It anticipates jokes made at its expense before they happen. As the Fuzzy Masked Man says, "There's just nothing to make fun of."

There's no guarantee that my rules will work for season 4. But I'm sure as hell going to have fun seeing for myself.

"Out of Context, This is Brilliant"

Some shows you can jump right into with no prior knowledge. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is not one of those shows.

Out of all the players for our Buffy test game, only two of us had seen every episode. I anticipated that I would have to explain some stuff as we watched, but I didn't properly realize just how the series builds on itself over time. What starts as a simple monster of the week show becomes a sprawling epic by the end of its seven season run. The main cast goes through several rotations, relationships begin and dissolve, good becomes evil and vice versa. It's a lot to handle, especially for the uninitiated.

So what does making a drinking game for this kind of roller coaster entail? We had our work cut out for us this week.

Warning: DEFINITELY NSFW

We here at For Your Inebriation are a bunch of dirty birds, especially when we're living life on the tipsy side. A bunch of the stuff we say while playing through these games is unpublishable. I'd rather take a look at these games with a critical eye than go straight for the sex jokes.

That's all going out the window with this game. This show is famous for its scantily clad women, its power-hungry men, and levels of gore beyond reproach. Some have called it gratuitous. But the show still has garnered high levels of critical acclaim, it is changing the way television is being produced even though it is still in its early stages, AND it has earned the title of the most widely pirated show on television.

Can a show be considered high art and low art at the same time? In any case, Game of Thrones is going strong at season three, and we'll be playing this drinking game for a long, long, LONG time to come.